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President-elect’s son describes First Minister’s comments as ‘nasty’ and bemoans Scotland’s red tape, bureaucracy and ‘insane taxation’
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A great deal of nonsense has percolated into the public domain about Donald Trump’s attitude to Scotland, the land of his mother not his father. She was born on the Isle of Lewis and is to be honoured in the naming of his latest Scottish golf course.
The latest angry words have come from none other than the president-elect’s son, Eric, who has described as “nasty” some of the comments made by John Swinney, Scotland’s First Minister.
From this vantage point it appeared to be a stupid, but still fairly innocuous, comment from Swinney, who said that he would prefer it if Americans backed Kamala Harris to win the US presidential election.
I would reckon that a great many British people – perhaps even a majority – would have thought the same way. But with a race that right up to the last second had been looking very close, most world statesmen – and even those with aspirations in that direction, such as Swinney – thought it better to steer clear of expressing a preference between Trump and Harris.
However, in some quarters it looked as if the sky had fallen on the unfortunate SNP leader’s bald pate. Granted, Swinney had gone too far in saying that “people in the United States should vote for Kamala Harris” and showed that he was way in excess of his pay grade in seeking to tell Americans how to cast their ballots.
Daft, his words most certainly were but “appalling” and “insulting”? Hardly.
These were the very words used by those who work for the Trump family in Scotland, but I would hazard a guess that Donald Trump has been subjected to all manner of worse insults and criticisms from UK politicians further up the international ladder than Swinney. Take Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s past description of the president-in-waiting as “a Nazi sympathiser”; and he’s now had dinner with the target of his angry attack.
Unfortunately, Eric, the president-elect’s third child, appears to have taken up the cudgel on his father’s behalf. He conceded that his father wouldn’t lose any sleep over Swinney’s comments before adding: “My father adores Scotland, and you have a First Minister coming out and just being fairly nasty in the days leading up (to the presidential election).”
He did say that his father would be coming to Scotland next year to open the new golf course at the Trump International Resort at Menie, in Aberdeenshire. It is named the MacLeod Course, in honour of Donald Trump’s mother.
However, while his love of the country encouraged the newly re-elected president to invest in Scotland, his son also complained about the country’s red tape, bureaucracy and “insane taxation”. There will be few arguments amongst Scots on that score.
We’re informed that Scotland’s First Minister has subsequently sent a congratulatory letter to the president-elect and to prevent this little spat getting any worse, wouldn’t it be better if we now called the whole issue closed?
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